Ok, here's what I remember about them. They played at 3and 3/4 IPS. Cassette's played at 1 and 7/8. The Radio Shack car cassette player I had was bad for wow. My friends 8-track was better sounding for about a year till I upgraded and got a Pioneer cassette deck. Then the cassette was far superior. After I got a home cassette recorder my friend switched and didn't look back. I still remember my first listen to Dark Side on 8-track in friends old beat up Corolla. Thanks for the great memories! By the way, I miss my 240Z as well.
Welcome to Hell, here's your 8-Track
Neil Postman once said,
"Anyone who has studied the history of technology knows that technological change is always a Faustian bargain: Technology giveth and technology taketh away, and not always in equal measure. A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided."
I'm pretty sure that we know that the 8-track was more bad than good.
Question for audiophiles here who might know -- was there anything good about 8-track technology that was lost when it went extinct? And what was that good, audio-wise, specifically?